Stationary Ordering
I'm responsible for ordering all stationery in our office, so every time it comes to make an order, it's my job to go round everyone and ask if they need anything picking up.

We've had the classics, tartan paint, etc etc.

A while ago though, my sales manager(mostly serious man) asks if I can pick up a "Hammefor" (pronounced hammer4).

I end up spending about half an hour pouring through 3 catalogues, and can't find any mention anywhere.

Eventually, I give up and shout across the office (in hindsight, not the best idea) "I'm really stuck, what the hell's a Hammefor?"

His response? "For banging nails in."

Cue 10 people laughing their heads off at me as I try desperately to hide my face behind one of the catalogues.

Cheers

EDIT: Damn
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:15, 2 replies)

I can remember a few...
I was very gullible..examples are:

Paying £1 for some hash, turned out to be teabags. Being convinced by my 'mates' that I really could use marbles to see into the future as they were endowed with the same properties as a crystal ball. Convinced by my mates that i really could jump off that high wall using an umbrella as a parachute, the umbrella turned inside out and I landed on my back..couldn't move for days.

Being told that the song "I predict a riot" by the Kaiser Chiefs was actually a song performed by past weathermen and the lyrics were actually..

"I predict the rain"

I believed that...really

My current recruiter convincing me that he would have to take £20 a day off my rate of daily £270 cause he would have to pay indemnity insurance for me...then me realizing I already have indemnity insurance, but having already signed my contract, I was pretty screwed.

CUNTS! Don't trust anyone.
(scotsbloke, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:14, Reply)

The lengths we had to go to for this one
A few friends and myself once set about the task of fooling one of our not-so-gullible friends into something of epic proportions. If it was to work we would need to research our topics heavily and be able to give detailed information on all topics involved, just slightly edited here and there to fit our purposes. Now this was someone who wasn't going to be easy to fool at all and would easily smell something fishy, so we were going to have to go about it with faces of pure honesty. We actually practiced these faces and told the lie to ourselves so many times that we knew we could confidently tell this story without them suspecting a thing!

I will just hint at the topic of the lie here - you can get the full details and reaction piccies after the jump (it was a very detailed and lengthy blog post ^_^):
England, Bananas, Conspiracy, Disease
JUMP
( MadAdamUk was last alive on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:14, 4 replies)

A friend of mine (bless her)
Usually this girl is more than a little gullible. In the past we've managed to convince her that:
1) iPods get heavier if you put more songs on them,
2) lightbulbs have dead fireflies in them through which electricity is passed, and when one blows it's because the firefly exploded,
3)if you sent a text message in English but your phone's language was in Turkish, it would translate it before sending. We then proceeded to send her texts of complete gibberish such as "laklakh rotito mo por la kakalh terekhma" to prove it.
4) my sister was adopted and mentioning it was illegal under the Adopted Children's Act 1989

...etc. etc.

But this story tops the lot because she almost inadvertantly got her own back.

My dear friend once came into work with an astonishing story...
She exclaimed, "Immigration isn't anywhere near as much of a problem here as some places. Apparently there are so many immigrants entering The Netherlands these days that it's physically making the country too heavy so it's sinking into the North Sea!"

We all looked on with a little disbelief and a lot of scepticism, especially considering how the Netherlands is, well, part of a massive continental landmass of several thousand tonnes. We enquired further into how she had heard this, and she said she'd heard it in an interview on the news. She was so insistent and I guess we all wanted it to be true, so much so that some people actually started to believe her. A couple of people started ranting about how it was terrible and it wouldn't have happened if Thatcher was still around (how Thatcher would affect Holland, I have no idea. But you know Daily Mail readers...). We left it at that and got on with our work.

So later one of my friends tuned into (I think it was) the BBC News website to catch up on world events, where he was confronted with one of those video news stories. Calling us all over, we saw a copy of the interview she had been referring to! It was true!!! However, our disbelief was short lived upon noticing the title "Netherlands sinking under Immigration problem" accompanied by a chat with one of the leading economists in Holland.

...The daft bint had thought they meant 'sinking' literally.
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:12, 2 replies)

Short but sweet
A girl i used to work with once spent an hour watering all the plastic plants in the [insert name of popular pizza shack] that I may as well have called home for a couple of years at the recommendation of one of the managers.
(darkmavis86, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:10, 2 replies)

Democracy
I believed that my opinions mattered, that the government were there to govern not rule.

I believed that change is possible just by ticking a little box and that righteous speeches delivered with passion and zeal represented the true feelings of the esteemed men or women stood on their soap box and not the vote winning centralised policy of an inward looking group of melomanical shysters.

I believed that we Great British were the pinnacle of international diplomacy and that any sense that we may still look to invade and rule other countries was in our colonial past.

I believed that they would listen.

I believed that they had the interests of the country and heart and not just the potential for an increased term in office.

I believed in democracy and it failed me.

I am an idiot.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:09, Reply)

Mate's wife's sister
I was down south (well, Birmingham, but its south from Nottingham...ish) helping my friend and his fiancée move house.

We were sat out in the garden with his fiancées sister who was rather proud of her new coat, specifically a "Gilet"

We decided that we would have no idea what one was and ask her to get it out to show us.

On her producing this sleeveless garment, we (me and my best mate) told her that they weren't called Gilets up in Leeds (where we went to Uni) and that a more common name was a "Merkin".

Queue much hilarity as she told the majority of her friends that she was going to be sporting her new Merkin into town later on.

Of course not all of them were aware that a merkin is a pubic wig. So the hilarity was doubled as they started stating that they were going to get a merkin as well!

Oh how we laughed. Didn't tell her the truth though.
(stevio is on the prowl for a girlfriend!, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:08, 1 reply)

The gullibility of a hungover 25 year old
Not long after I'd got my first, long overdue promotion (having worked for the DSS for 5 years up to that point as a 'technical operative', i.e. dogsbody), my old colleagues deceided to have one of their semi-regular nights out after payday.

Never one to shirk my duties towards alcomahol, and despite the fact that I was now working some 50 miles away, I jumped at the chance to have a bit of a catch up with my much-missed former workmates. "I've got a long drive, though, so i'll just have a couple".

Anyone that knows me will testify that "just a couple" is a physical impossibility for me, once I get the taste.

And thus it was. The night came, my former colleagues and I drank and made merry. I had considerably more than "a couple" and went home to bed that night drunk and happy.

However, despite taking a pint of water to bed with me, I was so utterly zonked out that not a drop passed my lips. The alarm went off at its customary 6am, and I awoke feeling like shit. Groaning quietly so as not to wake the wife up, I slid into my dressing gown, went to the kitchen and made myself a strong coffee. Usually, once I'm vertical and pumped full of caffeine, I pull round pretty sharpish.

Not this morning. No. A shower should fix it. Wobbling slightly as I got into the shower, I stood and let the hot water cascade over me for about 10 minutes. Is that better?

Is it fuck.

Conceding defeat I made the missus a brew and informed her that the car was all hers as there was no way I was risking driving to work. At 8:30am I rang the office and informed them that I wouldn't be in that day as I'd picked up a bug. Then I lay down on the couch and felt sorry for myself.

At about 11am the phone rang. I picked it up and mumbled "Hello?"

"Ah, hello der" came a chirpy Irish sounding voice, "Is dat DG?"

"Er, yes it is".

"Dat's grand. Oim Chris O'Donnell, ringin from da staff welfare service. We had a report dat you'd rang in sick today, and we were just ringin to check if everyting was alroight dere?"

Shit. "Er, yes, I just picked up a bit of a bug is all, I'll be fine tomorrow", I lied profusely. Shithitshit.

"Ah, it's just dat we heard dere had bin a bit of do on last noight, and we wondered if you'd maybes had a bad point or sumting?"

"Er, what?" Shitshitshitshitshit.

"A bit of a do. You know, a few points".

"Er, who did you say you were again?", the name creeping through my skull in some vague recollection.

"Chris O'Donnell from da staff welfare servicepppffffffthahahahahahahahahahaha".

Pause.

"Sorry mate, couldn't resist. It's me. I rang your office and they said you'd called in sick, so I put two and two together..."

Brian Miller, you utter cunt. I still cringe.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:08, 1 reply)

A recent one...

While discussing the details of an upcoming gig, a friend; let's call her S, opined that it would be amusing if she were to write a song about our singer (G), to sing at the end of the gig.

"Hilarious" I said, "No chuffing way" I thought (not sure why, but I seem to be quite polite in my head).

Being an affable type I played along and contented myself that we'd never have time to fit the song in.

The set list was agreed among the band and I was pleased to insist that we squeezed as many songs as possible into the half hour we had allotted to us.

With a couple of days to the gig our singer was having a chat with S and was asked to pass on the message: "Tell Gunther that the song's coming on really well. He'll know what I'm talking about".

"Fucksocks" I thought, for this was no time for politeness, not even in my head. "How to manage this without looking like a twat in front of the band, they're never going to go along with this. We haven't even practised for fucks sakes."

Right, quick text to S: "G tells me the song's coming along well... hope we have time for it!" in my head the text was awash with sarcasm, but sarcasm is difficult to convey in text form, so I added more: "There's every chance we won't have time, but there will be more gigs..."

That should do. She won't be disappointed and I won't look like a muppet. Or would I?

A text arrived immediately on my phone: "Hi Gunther. You didn't think I was serious did you? I was only joking, I'm not getting up in front of a crowd of people and singing, no fucking way!"

Ahem.

The gig was last Thursday and I think my bout of stupidity is going to outlive the memory of what was actually a really good performance.
( Moey, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:06, Reply)

Celebrities that have faded from the limelight
and anyone that I know but haven't seen for a while..

Every time when I'm pissed and get into a "Whatever happened to..." type conversation, my mates always tell me they're dead. Plane crash. O.D'd. Etc. And I always believe them.

Gets kinda strange when I inevitably bump into a dead person walking down the street a few months later.
( Rusty Shackleford www.junt.co.uk / @joeyrobbo, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:06, Reply)

Once, a long long time ago...
...a seemingly kind man called Gary told me he had lots of sweets and other nice things in the back of his van and I could have them if I joined his gang....
(Kushan just wants to fit in..to your mum, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:04, Reply)

Texting on the cheap
A few years ago I persuaded an idiot colleague of mine that mobile phone companies can only tell when you've sent a text (and thus charge you for it) if there are vowels in the message and that's why so many kids write in 'txt spk'.

For the next month she must have sent out hundreds of incoherent, garbled messages until the day she got her phone bill and questioned me on my claim...

'Oh, really? Maybe it's just Vodafone who do that then?'.
(LordMuck, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:02, Reply)

Bowling Balls
Convinced the boy in the office, read 28 year old engineering graduate, that ten pin bowling balls had bias: "You've seen them curve haven't you".

Next time we went bowling I took a pocked full of sticky dots from the office planner and put them on all the bowling balls.

The rest of the office then watched him pick up the "right handed bias bowling balls" for the rest of the night.
(Yellow Car is now red, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:01, 3 replies)

The noo-noo tree
Years ago, my youngest daughter used a dummy. As we were the sort of parents who were horrified to see any child over the age of 3 using one, my ex- and I let her use the dummy sparingly, and were determined to break her of the habit as soon as possible.
We found a book called "The Last noo-noo" about a dragon called Marlon who held onto his dummy (in the book called, God knows why, "noo-noos") for too long. The book ended with him planting his last dummy to grow a noo-noo tree.

And so, the plan was hatched. When we decided it was time for the little one to be separated from her sucking device, we went out one day to a park far, far from home, taking with us a trowel and her last dummy.

Together, the three of us found the perfect spot, amongst other trees. Our daughter helped us dig a hole, with us asking her "is that deep enough - do you think it will grow here ?" and similar platitudes. With great ceremony, she put the dummy in the ground, covered it over with earth, and patted it down.

Reader, it worked a treat. There were a couple of moments on the walk back to the car when I wondered if she had rumbled our ruse, but not so - from that moment, she was noo-noo free.

Cruel trick ? I hope not. Better than the one my parents pulled on me, claiming monsters lived in the underpass. God knows what psychological damage that did to me...
( I_Was_Mordred, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:00, 6 replies)

Less gullible, more dim
I once heard a chap on the radio talking on the subject of 'ridiculous things that people you know believe'.

A caller rang in as is required to become a caller and told the DJ the following.

'My girlfriend doesn't believe in giraffs...but she is quite scared of werewolves!'

Genius logic.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:55, Reply)

Not me but ....
.. people I lived in halls with at university. WE had a stupid wall where we'd write down anything stupid that people came out with and I was particularly bad for trying to fool people into believing anything and everything. I would even occasionally then try to convince someone that something that was indeed a fact was a fact - then because of the nature of my making them believe random things, they'd then not believe me and decide that I was making this fact up and no-way could it be real!

Topics of gullibility I can remember off the top of my head:
Tesco sell flat pack houses now don't they?!
You can buy do it yourself haircuts now from tesco too.
gullible lass reply:- OMG, you really can buy everything from tesco!

There's this thing called the channel tunnel that goes under the sea between england and france (she wouldn't believe us on this one!!!)

Dogs lay eggs

Tried to convince her that duck-billed platypi are real creatures (She wouldn't believe me!)

(I know not all are gullible but funny nontheless)
( MadAdamUk was last alive on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:52, Reply)

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
In a previous job I used to work on fault support and had to deal with dead lines. Usually when we got it fixed the poor customer would always ask 'Will my Broadband work now?'

I would usually answer with 'Yeah, it should do, we find that in (totally made up percentage) of times fixing the voice fixes the broadband'

Not sure why, just wanted ot see what I could get away with
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:51, Reply)

Technology
.
I was tasked with taking a group of executives around the datacenter and demonstrating what a wonderful, fail-safe, backed-up to the hilt datacenter we had.

I stood in front of one of the racks, opened the door and pointed to Dell Poweredge server.

"Quite apart from having all the data held in a RAID array with dual power supplies, dual network cards and it's own built-in UPS, even the servers have dual RAID 1 mirrored disks. If a disk fails, the other one takes over automatically and the management software sends a page to us. And, as the drives are hot-swapable, it means that I can replace a drive, while the server is running, and won't miss a beat. Watch"

BBBBBBRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....clunk


Hot-swapable my arse!


Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:47, 1 reply)

I fought the law and the law sent me a threatening letter
During the summer of 1995 before I went to university I received my one and only parking ticket. I was quite shocked at the £40 fine, but the small print stated that if I paid within a week it was reduced to £9, so being a good little bitch of the system I paid up & put it behind me.

A few months later I was queuing with friends in my halls of residence dining hall, the queue filtered past the pigeon holes where you received mail & I saw that I had received an official looking brown envelope. I opened the letter & my heart sank, it was a court summons for non-payment of the parking fine. Without finishing the letter I sprinted out of the dining hall, past the line of people queuing for their lunch & headed for one of the payphones. With shaking hands I phoned my dad at work:

Me: “Dad, I’ve been sent a court summons for not paying that parking ticket”
Dad: “But you paid it”
Me: “It must have got lost in the post”
Dad: “What does the letter say?”
Me: “It states the date of the fine, my registration number, the date of my court hearing, oh god dad it’s in 2 days time…it says if I don’t attend they’ll send da boyz to get me….”
Dad: “It says what?”
Me: “They’ll send da boyz to get me”

At this point I realised the letter is signed “A. Cunt” in the unmistakeable handwriting of my friend Neil. My friend Neil who was with me when I received the parking ticket, my friend Neil who knew my halls of residence address, my friend Neil who is a complete bastard and still mocks me to this day about the time I fell hook, line & sinker for a badly typed letter.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:46, Reply)

Eastern Promise
During a fairly nondescript drinking session at University the chat turned to sex. It was pretty standard for 20 year old guys who weren't getting a great deal of it to talk about it a lot, usually speculating wildly.

One of our number was quite successful with women and he tended to give quite descriptive talks on the relative merits of differing types of women. There were not many who would challenge him on knowledge of naked women.

Someone (I don't remember who - I can only just remember the event) however persuaded our hero that women from the Far East had vaginas which ran in a manner which was horizontal rather than verical. Left to right rather than front to back if you will.

Please bear in mind that this is in the mid 80's so it was not possible to easily check this out by going on the internet - you would have had to purchase some pretty specialist reading material to disprove this proposition.

Anyway, the matter was forgotten about - as I said it was not an evening of note.

A couple of years passed and a few of us met up at the wedding of a friend and our hero was there with his girlfriend who was an attractive japanese girl. At one point in the evening the chaps were talking when out of nowhere our mutual friend remarked that he considered us all to be a "shower of bastards."

When pressed it transpired that the reason was that since that evening he had been one a one man quest to fid out the truth and had eventually managed to lure this girl into bed only to be presented with a perfectly normal vagina shaped vagina. It was quite clear that this ranked as one of the major disappointments in his life.
(Rammer, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:46, Reply)

Ghostwatch
How many people fell for that?
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:45, 5 replies)

Gullible colleague
Many years ago when I worked in a little computer shop we had a rather gullible and not terribly technical colleague. "Not terribly technical" understates it - "worse than a man short" is perhaps closer. But, since he was a keen cyclist, we were able to keep him belting backwards and forwards between shop and office, across town.

"S.," the boss would say, "nip across to the shop and pick up the RAM disk head cleaner will you?", and he'd come across. We'd hand him something in a poly bag, and off he'd go - "Oh, and while you're at the office can you pick up some left-handed jiffy bags? These ones are the wrong way round, look..."

And so it went. Glass hammers and long stands were too obvious, but other things like a wireless power cable and an ethernet cable regassing kit were shipped back and forth.

Until we asked him to go and get a jar of coffee.

"What do you mean, 'a jar of coffee'?"
"Uhm, just some coffee, like that one there that's empty, but, you know, *not* empty."
"What, now? Where from?"
"I don't know, the Co-Op or something, here's some money, just go and get some coffee"
"Fucking wind-up merchants..." and he skulked off.
(gordonjcp, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:44, Reply)

Anyone remember Ghostwatch?
I was about 17 at the time, certianly old enough to know better, and it had me completely suckered. After it had finished I sat watching the blank screen in a panicked daze, wondering whether I should be running screaming out of the room or whether the whole thing had been a gigantic hoax.

And then the credits rolled - and I felt very silly indeed.

Wikipedia, if you don't remember or haven't heard of it.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:43, 3 replies)

bad joke become reality
Me: That whosit actress has been stabbed
Mrs: Which one?
Me: Wotserface...she was in Legally Blonde...Reece.......
Mrs: Witherspoon?
Me: WITH A KNIFE!!! (end of bad joke)
Mrs: Really? is she dead???
Me: Erm, yup - it was on the BBC website.
Mrs: *tippety tap to bbc website*
Me: chuckle chuckle chuckle
Mrs: Twat.

I love my mrs :)
( SpikeyPickle wishes he was mabazaritchie, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:43, 2 replies)

My whole family fell for this...
In the early '80s, I was watching Blue Peter with my mother when they had a feature on a new exhibit at London Zoo - it was a rare primate and it was known in its native region as a "Lirpa Loof".

It was about three or four feet tall and cute. What was most impressive about it, though, was its mimicry: it would copy the movements of members of the public who gathered around its enclosure exactly.

I was spellbound. So was my mother. My excuse is that I was about 7 years old. Hers is that... well, she's clearly not very bright.

Anyway: it was her birthday in a couple of weeks. (I shudder to think that she was about the age that I am now. Eek.) We decided that it would be fun to have a daytrip to London zoo to see this creature to celebrate - and so we did.

It was a fabulous sunny mid-April day. We wandered around the zoo, but could find no sign of the Lirpa Loof. (You know where this is going, don't you?) Dad went off to find a warden - maybe even the great Johnny Morris himself - and ask where we could find this amazing specimen that had been on Blue Peter.

Two minutes later, he came back looking rather sheepish.

The zookeeper told him that he should spell the animal's name backwards.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:39, 9 replies)

Despite having been taught about
engines at school, and understanding the basic principles, I was so distraught when my first motorbike had an engine problem, and then so relieved when a mate fixed it, that I stood and listened with grateful attention to him telling me it had been a problem with the 'piston-return spring'.
28 years later, EVERY FUCKING TIME WE MEET.....
:@ \
( blyerkit e k trilby, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:37, Reply)

I was sat on a train
quietly working away on something incredibubly boring and no doubt totally pointless when I was suddenly surrounded by a large group of wimmen, all rather interested in what I was doing, asking lots of questions and stuff. Really nice people.

I was, however, surprised to find that I'd mislaid my digital camera which had been in my laptop bag, and, oddly, the power supply for my laptop.

Still, jolly nice people.
( shadyron, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:36, Reply)

I will believe just about anything...
...especially when I was a kid. Since then I haven't really learnt.

ANYWAY: a bit of background. Mom was born with a malformed left ear. It's much smaller than her normal right ear, has a funny shape (almost like it was made out of wax and got a bit melted) and is completely deaf on that side.

When I was younger I asked her why her ear was that way. On one occasion she said a barber had curled it. The next time I asked, the story changed: as a baby, a rat crawled into her crib and chewed it off.

I believed BOTH those stories even though I had a vague idea that they both couldn't be true. Years later I realised she was born like that and when I mentioned her 2 conflicting stories she went "oh. I thought you would've been smart enough to know better".

DOH!
(Itchy Uvula, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:36, Reply)

Most gullible evaaarr
Get this. About two thousand years ago, some stoned hippy in the middle east managed to convince his mates that he was the son of god! They swallowed it hook, line and sinker - so much so that they even wrote a book about it.

Man, how that's kept us all laughing down the centuries. It's still a winner now.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:31, Reply)

Oh I am just too gullible for words...
Hell, I even believed the BBC when they said they had footage of flying penguins earlier this year.

So this will be the first of many replies I post this week, I am sure.

When I was younger, I wanted to go to Wimbledon Common to see the Wombles, which would have been about two hours drive from my Essex home.

But my Dad,bless him, saw how much I wanted to go, so he took me there.

We packed up a picnic, and off we want on our adventure.

I was so excited. I leapt in the car, and, as I still tend to do when travelling anywhere by car (or train, or plane or anything other than bike really) I promptly fell asleep.

Two hours later, I was woken up by my Dad tellinng me we had arrived.

I got hyper, was running around everywhere to see if I could find my cuddly heroes, and being really disspointed when he kept seeing Wombles in the opposite direction to where I where I was looking.

I kept spinning round just as one had 'hidden in that bush, over there' or 'must have dived down a hole behind that bumpy bit'

But still, I was having fun, so it wasn't too bad, until the fateful moment that hunger took over.

'Dad, can we have our sandwiches?'

'Of course'

But it wasn't to be. We opened the bag, and the sandwiches were gone! The Wombles had stolen our sandwiches while we weren't looking!

I was devastated. I loved The Wombles, how could they do this to us? They were supposed to be nice.

My relationship with them had been soured forever.

It was only many years later, during some idle conversation about childhood memories that the truth emerged.

My Dad had put me in the car, driven around for a bit until I fell asleep, headed to the local park, eaten the sandwiches, put his watch forward 2 hours and then woken me up.

Evil. Bastard.

I still don't trust those bloody Wombles though.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:24, 8 replies)